Elizabeth J. McCormack Professor of History

Thomas Wilson has written extensively about Confucian ritual and the cult of Confucius and is working on book titled Confucian Gods: An Intellectual History of Devotional Practice funded by a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies. He also received National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships in 1999-2000 and 2006-07. He has been a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, N.J. and conducted research in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China on Fulbright-Hays grants in 1992-93. He earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago.

Recent Courses Taught

Exploring Culture in the Great Cities of Asia
Emperor, Gentryman, and Commoner in Ming-Qing China
Modernity and Nationhood in China
Laozi and Confucius in History
Foucault: History, Sexuality, and Power
Confucian Traditions
History of Gods

Selected Publications

“Reading the Analects in the Sage’s Courtyard: A Modern Diner’s Guide to an Ancient Feast,” The Analects: A Norton Critical Edition, edited by Michael Nylan (Norton, 2014).

“Sacrifices to Confucius and Confucian ritual thought,” Collection of Western scholarship on Chinese history (Shanghai Classics Publishing House). 2012 (translation by Zhang Cong of revised version of “Culture, Society, Politics, and the Cult of Confucius,” in On Sacred Grounds.

Lives of Confucius, co-authored with Michael Nylan (Doubleday, 2010), Chinese translation under review by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press.

On Sacred Grounds: Culture, Society, Politics, and the Formation of the Cult of Confucius, Thomas A. Wilson, ed. (Institute for East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 2003).

“Ritualizing Confucius/Kongzi: The Family and State Cults of the Sage of Culture in Imperial China,” in Thomas A. Wilson, ed., On Sacred Grounds: Culture, Society, Politics, and the Formation of the Cult of Confucius (Institute for East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 2003), 43-94.

“Culture, Society, Politics, and the Cult of Confucius,” in Wilson, ed., On Sacred Grounds, 1-40.

“Sacrifice and the Imperial Cult of Confucius,” History of Religions 41 (Feb. 2002) 3: 251-87.